17 Low-Maintenance Cottage Garden Plants That Will Fill Your Yard with Color

This easy-to-grow perennial produces white or blue flowers that grow on stiff sturdy stems. It blooms in late spring to early summer, and like most cottage garden plants, bellflowers are great for cutting.

Name: Campanula persicifolia

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and well-drained soil

Size: To 3 feet tall

Zones: 3-7, depending on variety

Buy It: Bellflower ($8, The Home Depot)

A dainty-looking but easy-to-grow perennial, columbine blooms in spring and early summer. Its colorful blooms are loved by hummingbirds and gardeners alike.

Name: Aquilegia varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade in well-drained soil

Size: To 3 feet tall

Zones: 3-8, depending on variety

Buy It: Columbine ($8, The Home Depot)

These tough, low-growing perennials produce finely cut leaves in a gorgeous assortment of chartreuse, purple, red, bronze, green, silver. In spring and early summer, coralbells produce sprays of pink, red, or white flowers. These flowers are a top choice of hummingbirds.

Name: Heuchera varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and well-drained soil

Size: To 18 inches tall

Zones: 3-8

Buy It: Coralbells ($22, The Home Depot)

A simplistic beauty that works well in any cottage garden design, the daisy provides long-lasting summer blooms. Its bright white flowers with sunny yellow centers are perfect for beds and borders, as well as cutting gardens.

Name: Leucanthemum varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and well-drained soil

Size: To 3 feet tall

Zones: 5-9

Buy It: Shasta Daisy ($20, Etsy)

Producing stately spires in shades of purple, blue, pink, and white, delphiniums are about as regal as garden flowers come. However, these taller types of perennials need staking to protect them from wind but they're well worth this bit of extra work.

Name: Delphinium varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun and well-drained soil

Size: 4-6 feet tall, depending on variety

Zones: 3-7, depending on variety

Buy It: Cobalt Dreams Delphinium ($17, The Home Depot)

Filling spring gardens with their sweet scents, dianthus varieties offer pretty blooms in shades of pink, red, and white. When the flowering declines, deadhead the spent flowers to promote a second bloom.

Name: Dianthus varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and well-drained soil

Size: To 1 foot tall

Zones: 6-9, depending on variety

Buy It: Pink Dianthus ($19, The Home Depot)

This woodland beauty reliably produces beautiful upright spikes of bell-shape flowers in shades of purple, pink, and white. Most common foxgloves self-seed and appear each year in the garden, however, only a basal rosette of leaves is produced in the first year from seed. The plant's flowers are produced in the second year atop leafy spires arising from the centers of the basal rosettes. Grow this plant with caution, because all parts of it are highly poisonous.

Name: Digitalis varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: 2-5 feet tall, depending on variety

Zones: 4-8, depending on variety

Buy It: Woodland Excelsior Foxglove Mixture ($21, The Home Depot)

Always eye-catching additions to any sunny garden, hollyhocks bear large, colorful flowers on stems that can reach 8 feet tall. They bloom in a wide range of shades from nearly black to red, purple, yellow, and white.

Name: Alcea rosea

Growing Conditions: Full sun and medium moist well-drained soil

Size: 6-8 feet tall, depending on variety

Zones: 2-10

Buy It: Alcea rosea 'Nigra' ($15, White Flower Farm)

With lots of exciting varieties to choose from, bigleaf hydrangea shrubs produce large clusters of pink, blue, or white flowers in early summer. Those big blooms look gorgeous in a cut flower arrangement, if you can bear to take them out of your garden.

Name: Hydrangea macrophylla

Growing Conditions: Part sun to full shade and medium moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 10 feet tall

Zones: 5-11

Buy It: Bloomstruck Hydrangea ($29, The Home Depot)

Offering stunning blooms, many irises are wonderfully fragrant flowers and come in a rainbow of colors and sizes. An easy favorite for cottage gardens is Siberian iris with its grassy leaves, graceful flowers, and tolerance to rabbits.

Name: Iris varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and medium moist, well-drained soil

Height: to 4 feet tall

Zones: 3-8

Buy It: White Swirl Siberian Iris ($10, Etsy)

Both ornamental and useful, lavender bears fragrant foliage and flowers that draw pollinators. The blooms typically appear in shades of violet and white and are wonderful for drying and using in sachets and other craft projects.

Name: Lavandula varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun and well-drained soil

Size: 1-2 feet tall

Zones: 5-8, depending on variety

Buy It: Munstead Lavender ($15, The Home Depot)

This classic, low-growing perennial offers sprays of chartreuse blooms in spring and green foliage that is fuzzy to the touch. That fuzz often catches early morning dewdrops, giving lady's mantle a spangled appearance. Try growing it as an elegant landscape edging plant along a path or at the front of a perennial border.

Name: Alchemilla mollis

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and medium moist, well-drained soil

Size: 1-2 feet tall

Zones: 3-8

Buy It: Alchemilla mollis ($15, White Flower Farm)

With their showy, petal-packed blooms, peonies are some of the most romantic plants that bloom in mid- to late spring. They look stunning, bear a wonderful fragrance, and they're virtually pest free. Peonies also perform well outside your garden; you can enjoy cut peonies in a vase for up to three weeks with the right upkeep, or dry them to admire their colors for even longer.

Name: Paeonia varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and medium moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 3 feet tall, depending on variety

Zones: 3-8, depending on variety

Buy It: Peony Sorbet Mixed ($30, The Home Depot)

There's a wealth of geraniums that fit perfectly into cottage gardens, large and small. An especially striking variety is 'Johnson's Blue', which offers beautiful blue-purple flowers in early summer. These plants also offer vibrant foliage colors in the fall.

Name: Geranium 'Johnson's Blue'

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and medium moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 18 inches tall

Zones: 4-8

Buy It: Geranium 'Johnson's Blue' ($24, The Home Depot)

One of the most brilliant plants of the late-summer garden, garden phlox produces stunning clusters of white, pink, lavender, and red blooms atop tall stems. The flowers are often delightfully fragrant, which helps them attract hummingbirds and other pollinators like butterflies.

Name: Phlox paniculata

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and medium moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 4 feet, depending on variety

Zones: 4-8

Buy It: Bright Eyes Tall Garden Phlox ($22, The Home Depot)

A biennial that typically self-seeds, sweet William produces beautiful clusters of fragrant blooms from late spring to early summer. The flowers come in vivid shades of red, pink, white and bicolor. The blooms make gorgeous additions to flower bouquets, and they attract pollinators.

Name: Dianthus barbatus

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and well-drained soil

Size: To 2 feet tall

Zones: 3-9, depending on variety

Buy It: Sweet William Mixture ($10, The Home Depot)

With their edible and fragrant blooms, violets are among the most charming flowers for cottage gardens. These cool-weather lovers are perennials that will add color to your garden in spring and often bloom again in fall.

Name: Viola varieties

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and evenly moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 9 inches tall

Zones: 6-11, depending on variety

Buy It: Viola Celestial Northern Lights ($15, White Flower Farm)